Heating an apartment 30m2, old buildings - gas, electricity, what to choose?

Hello forum members.

I am looking for advice on choosing a central heating and hot water system. The case concerns a tiny apartment of 30 m2. His features.

- Middle apartment on the 1st floor, building not insulated
- One external wall with windows
- An empty attic above the ceiling
- There are inhabited apartments behind the walls.
- Height

Have you thought about a pellet fireplace?
http://biopal.com.pl/kominki-i-piecyki/powietrzne-na-pelet/

To tell the truth, I never even thought about pellets, and I wouldn't have anywhere to put the fireplace, unless it was for a built-in wardrobe :)

In addition, the cheapest on the given website costs 5500, for that I will buy an ARISTON condensate with a minimum capacity of 2.5 kW.

But you will pay for the difference in fuel prices, for example compared to gas.
But since you don't have room for it anyway, that wasn't the topic

Good evening,
not wanting to repeat the topic, let me write here.

I am renovating a 30m2 apartment for my grandmother and like many before me I am faced with a heating dilemma.

- An old tenement house, solidly insulated.
- 4 storey building, 2nd floor.
- Apartment height h = 270cm.
- There was a tiled stove in the apartment (because I had kicked it out).
- You can make a gas connection to the apartment (it will not cost me anything).
- The apartment was empty for a year and it was not heated, at an outside temperature of 0 ° C in the apartment was 16 ° C.
-The windows with triple glazing are 120 cm long and 120 cm high.
-The apartment has a separate ventilation chimney and a separate smoke chimney - checked.
- I will install a 700W ladder radiator in the bathroom to heat it only for the duration of the bath.
- I put new electrics and pipes in the apartment. (only the walls remain)

I am enclosing a drawing to show the apartment.
rzut miesz..nia.pdf Download (22.02 kB)
The outer wall is the one on the left. One window in the room, the other in the "kitchen".

I wanted to install gas, but in the heating technology store I was told that gas stoves are not made for such small apartments (I also wanted to heat the water) and that I was to buy a 3kW discharging electric stove.
I drove up to the store No. 2 where the kind gentleman said that the accumulative stove in a large room is not enough and I must have a second one in the kitchen under the window because the dew point and other such.
So I dropped into two more stores and heard in one that gas would be cheaper anyway, and in the other that if the apartment is so warm, the most sensible thing to do is to buy 2 electric heaters with a ventilation and a thermostat with a power of 2000W for PLN 500 a piece.

I would like to add that my grandmother is away from home during the week from 7-13 / 2pm on dialysis.

We want to obtain a temperature of 22-24 * C in the apartment.

Thank you.

Really, no one will tell you anything?
Since yesterday, I am considering whether to insert a dynamic accumulative for PLN 2,500, and if it does not work, resell and invest in a pellet fireplace, the cost of about PLN 7,000.

Electricity is always the most expensive, but on such a small surface there is unlikely to be a gas boiler of adequate power (each will be heavily oversized - even at 20 degrees frost). 16 degrees in an apartment unheated for a year with an outside temperature of 0 degrees indicates good insulation and almost negligible demand for heat. So electric, preferably heating inserts for tiled stoves (they are made, among others, by Elektrotermia in Krakow). As for gas heating, it would make sense if a suitable gas burner was allowed to be fitted to the tiled stove (it was once done and it is common in Ukraine).

Or maybe heating with infrared panels? a colleague has installed a similar-sized apartment and praises himself, switching to heating other than gas, it is worth considering completely giving up gas. Read http://www.energooszczednie.com.pl/nasza-oferta/ogoszenia-podczarzeniani%C4%85/

Look for the offer of storage heaters on Allegro. You can buy imported, used in good condition for a few hundred dollars.
Electricity in the 2nd tariff is comparable in price to gas. And the installation is cheaper and safer to use.
Do not bring gas into the apartment.

I have not seen such an absurdity that someone would recommend a solid fuel boiler for a 30m2 apartment .... But there are different preferences.

Regarding the topic - if the heat demand is large, because the flat is leaky and not insulated, the windows with holes are gas. if tight, it is only electricity

do you mean pellets?

Forum members, thank you very much for all your posts.
I decided and bought a dynamic electric storage DIMPLEX VFMi 40 heater with 4kW heaters. It will be connected to phase 1, but a new 3x2.5 cable on a separate circuit.
If there are frosts, I will let you know how it worked, if not, I will try to write next year. If I forgot and I know that I searched myself, maybe another looking for me to write j_kuba [know what] wp.pl.

Did you buy new art?
What's your electricity tariff?

skarab3 wrote:

Forum members, thank you very much for all your posts.
I decided and bought a dynamic electric storage DIMPLEX VFMi 40 heater with 4kW heaters. It will be connected to phase 1, but a new 3x2.5 cable on a separate circuit.
If there are frosts, I will let you know how it worked, if not, I will try to write next year. If I forgot and I know that I searched myself, maybe another looking for me to write j_kuba [know what] wp.pl.

4kW per phase is a lot. I do not know what the electrician says, but where to get a single-phase 20A socket (unless it is permanently connected in a box). Maybe somewhere there are special single-phase sockets for a current greater than 16A.

Zbigniew Rusek wrote:

skarab3 wrote:

Forum members, thank you very much for all your posts.
I decided and bought a dynamic electric storage DIMPLEX VFMi 40 heater with 4kW heaters. It will be connected to phase 1, but a new 3x2.5 cable on a separate circuit.
If there are frosts, I will let you know how it worked, if not, I will try to write next year. If I forgot and I know that I searched myself, maybe another looking for me to write j_kuba [know what] wp.pl.

4kW per phase is a lot. I do not know what the electrician says, but where to get a single-phase 20A socket (unless it is permanently connected in a box). Maybe somewhere there are special single-phase sockets for a current greater than 16A.

Permanently connected in a box it will be.

Electric stone heaters are an expensive, but very efficient and energy-saving element, which in addition to their appearance have many properties, primarily they give off heat through radiation, thanks to which there is no air circulation, and thus no dust and dust rise. Even after disconnecting them from the power supply, heat is still supplied, which makes them energy-efficient.

All electric heaters are almost the same energy efficient. So they convert electricity into heat with an efficiency close to 1. What you write about is certainly not energy-saving, at most it can be convenient to use.

Yes, all electric resistance heaters are 100% efficient, but there are some nuances. One of them is the feeling of heat, if we have an infrared source at the same room temperature, there is more comfort. If, thanks to such a feeling of heat, we can lower the temperature in the room by 1 degree, then approximately 5% of heating will be saved annually. I tested it practically, the heating cables placed in the wall provide greater comfort than an oil radiator. The wall simply emits IR with a large surface, and the radiator, despite the higher temperature, is small. Now, even at 19 degrees I feel comfortable, and once even at 21 degrees I felt a strange chill. That is why the stone plate "uses less electricity", it is simply one of the most comfortable forms of heating, unfortunately expensive. Cables and heating mats are ridiculously cheap, and when properly installed, they will give the same results.

gaz4 wrote:

Cables and heating mats are ridiculously cheap, and when properly installed, they will give the same results.

I use this type of heating - I put polystyrene on the outer wall, mesh, glue and ceramic tiles. A 700W heating mat in the adhesive. The controller has two sensors, one in the adhesive layer (protection against overheating), the other for air - the control is set from it. In fact, it is a typical electric floor heating transferred to the wall. It works perfectly, although the inertia is not so great that it can be treated as a substitute for a storage heater. In a word, comfort, but not very cheap.

On the other hand, a very economical solution of heating with electricity is the use of a heat pump. In fact, it is air conditioning with heating function that allows you to work down to -15 (some -20) ° C. The cost of heating is 3 - 4 times lower than that of simple electric heating.

I made my wall heating on an internal wall made of solid brick. The house is over 100 years old, so the walls are thick, and hence the heat capacity is enormous. The outer wall is not good even when insulated because the heat leakage depends on the temperature difference. If, for example, the heating mat reaches 40 degrees, on average, twice as much heat escapes to the outside than normally. For this reason, I have little power because most of the walls I could use are external. The whole thing is on the 2nd tariff, so the cost is comparable to gas with higher comfort. However, even installation on a well-insulated external wall can be compared with a normal radiator - a comparable amount of heat escapes, but such a ceramic wall works like a good old tiled stove :D

If someone is planning this type of solution (especially with the possibility of accumulation), I advise you to choose cables and mats with the lowest possible power per meter. Then there is no risk of overheating, otherwise you have to put the sensor in the mortar like an ash40 friend. Heat pumps are cheap to use, but expensive to invest. When I counted the turnaround time compared to the resistance one, it turned out to be about 100 years, I will not survive that much

with, say, a heating power of 3kw, the heat pump will take 0.55PLN and the electric heater 1.65PLN. So we have PLN 1.1 savings per hour. Assuming 10 hours a day and 150 days a year, we have PLN 1650 savings per year.

The cost of such an air-to-air pump with assembly is about PLN 2,500, so ROI

gaz4 wrote:

The outer wall is not good even when insulated because the heat leakage depends on the temperature difference.

I knew it, but consciously accepted it. Why? Because thanks to this, there is no cold wall and no hot wall in the room, but only a warm wall. The cost is higher, but the comfort is also higher

gaz4 wrote:

Heat pumps are cheap to use, but expensive to invest. When I counted the turnaround time compared to the resistance one, it turned out to be about 100 years, I will not survive that much

I wish you at least 100 years! But as for the payback time, it's not too bad. I am currently using two pumps. One in the apartment, air-to-air reduces the cost of heating annually by about 600 PLN. It cost PLN 1,800, installation PLN 400. The second one in the air-water house is still in operation too short to provide specific values, but for example for February it is about 1400kWh, which is about 700 PLN. The cost of the pump is 9000, plus the reservoir for 5000, but it is also used by solar panels, so the question is how many%? Installation around 2000. A few years, yes, but not 100

An air-to-air or air-to-water pump is a weak source of heat for a person living a stone's throw from the Polish cold pole. The COP will be much lower than that of the inhabitant of Warsaw, not to mention Wrocław. Anyway, such a pump cannot be an independent heat source, so an additional one is necessary. And here we come to the heart of the problem, because two expensive investments are a typical redundancy. When doing air-water heating, I would have to run CO, which is extremely expensive in an old house. Air-to-air would be cheaper but I need DHW, i.e. a boiler. And if so, it will be unprofitable on a 24/7 basis, and the pump becomes redundant on two tariffs.

I have a very well insulated house, annual heating expenses do not exceed PLN 1,000, including probably PLN 800. Decent pumps that can be the main source of heat must derive them from the ground or water, but the cost will not be less than PLN 40,000. So even if I had electricity for free, it would pay for itself for 40 years. In turn, the pump extracting heat from the air will work with a high COP only in the transitional period when it is relatively warm outside. This year was special and the whole December could be warm, but January and February are out. At the beginning of the year, the temperature dropped to minus ten degrees and remained so until the end of the month. Then came the "thaw" with the maximum air temperature not exceeding 5 degrees, regular frosts at night. 1 kWh costs me 28 groszy (G12r), so at COP = 3 I would gain max 20 groszy per kWh, but where I live it is 10-15 groszy. I will take as the Arbiter COP = 3, that is, a profit of PLN 0.60 per 3kW pump. The problem is that working 10 hours a day for 150 days, it would produce 4,500 kWh, while I need 4-5,000 depending on how severe winter is. Even if I somehow used these 4.5 thousand kWh at COP = 3, with the above tariff, the annual profit would be around PLN 900, which is theoretically a return in about 3 years. For me, such a pump would probably produce approx. 2,000 kWh with an average COP = 2, so the annual profit does not exceed PLN 300, and the return in over 8 years. I don't think it would be worth tearing down half the house to distribute warm air from the pump to save three hundred a year. The more so because during the frost I would have to use the fireplace anyway. In winter, with the help of a coil, it also heats DHW, with an air-to-air pump I would have to use electricity ...

The problem is that when someone has a high heat consumption, he looks at the current costs because the investment in reducing them almost always pays off. Having a house with a demand of

Well, I don't think there are any perfect, optimal solutions for everyone.

The apartment in which I use the air-air pump is in a building (block) where only electricity is available. As a standard, the apartments were equipped with convection heaters. Yes, this solution also has some advantages - minimum investment costs, the possibility of independent regulation in each room, individual settlement for the energy used. On the other hand, you pay directly for each J or kWh of energy you use. The annual demand for this apartment is 6000kWh - for all purposes, of course, but most of it is heating.

The heat pump works with COP about 3. Therefore, I admit that I estimate the savings in a simplified way - I measure the energy consumption of the pump, multiply it by 2 and I get savings. When converting to PLN, I use the average price of kWh from the bill. Can only the 2nd tariff be used? You can, but you either have to invest or give up a lot on comfort. Cheap energy is available mainly at night, and I need the most heating in the afternoon. An investment in storage heaters is a cost similar to an air-to-air pump. An investment in a sufficiently large capacity container is a cost probably even greater, and inconceivable in an apartment anyway due to its dimensions. So what remains?

Of course, in the event of severe frosts, an alternative is necessary - the usual radiators used so far. Anyway, they are ridiculously cheap, so even if you add the cost of their purchase, it does not matter.

In turn, in the house where I used the air-water pump, there was already a floor heating system, there are also ordinary central heating radiators. The hot water was from a tank heated with a coil connected to a gas furnace. The house is large, it was not perfectly insulated, it needed renovation. I replaced the windows and doors because they were damaged. I insulated the walls. I could do nothing else, but a little bit out of curiosity, I keep digging. I put in a multifunctional 300l tank, installed solar panels and connected them to the coil in this tank. The hot water is taken from the coil passing through this tank. The next step was to connect the air-to-water heat pump on one side and the floor heating on the other. CO is, in the old days, fed from a gas furnace.

In case of too much frost, I can supply everything from a gas stove. I did not modify the installation at all, but in the boiler room I changed the circuit for the floor heating. Now I am checking how it will work. In the future, I plan to add a connection to connect the central heating to the pump - of course only in transitional periods, when you want to warm up a bit, but the radiators do not have to be hot. In addition, I want to use the floor heating in the summer for cooling, so that I can have thermal comfort even in the hottest heat.

Here, too, I estimate the savings by measuring the energy consumption of the heat pump and assuming COP = 3. I know, this is an imperfect measurement, but how do I measure the actual amount of energy put into heating the water? Install full metering?

I still think it's a good idea for me, but I'd love to suggest other solutions.

gaz4 wrote:

I have a very well insulated house, annual heating expenses do not exceed PLN 1,000, including probably PLN 800.

what is the size of this house and what do you heat with so little?

I have almost 80 m2, of which about 70 m2 are heated. Somehow I managed to insulate it to the level of 4-5 thousand kWh per year, and half and half of the energy comes from electricity and wood. This winter, I will probably use less than 2,000 kWh of electricity, which gives about PLN 500 + 2 m3 of wood for about PLN 300. I burn wood in a fireplace (actually a fireplace stove) with an installed coil that captures some of the heat normally escaping the chimney. In conjunction with the collector, I have "free" hot water almost all year round, and I connect the heater in the boiler to the socket only a few times a year. And to think that the previous owner used about 5 tons of coal a year 10 years ago Importantly, a significant part of the insulation could be done very cheaply because there is a space for 15 cm of wool above the ceiling, only this would reduce the consumption by about 2 tons of coal. In old houses we have huge reserves that allow us to save, you just need to know how to use them.

Jesion40 - if I bought a house with a floor covering, I would also be interested in an air-water pump. It is a kind of a natural compound, because the low-temperature underfloor heating system boosts the COP of the pump. Then I would give up the collectors because they are competition for pumps: when the collectors are the most efficient, the pump also achieves the highest COP. For this reason, one of these devices will not be used in an optimal way. It is worth checking what are the possibilities of installing thermal insulation above the ceiling, because that is where the most heat escapes. This means that there will also be the fastest ROI.

The easiest method estimates The return on your investment would be to determine the energy consumption of your home. The average annual temperature difference between the house and its surroundings during the heating season in northern Poland is approx. 20 degrees. If it's 0 degrees outside you can just plug in the electric heaters and see what power they will hold at 20 degrees. That power multiplied by 170 * will give the annual heat demand, and when multiplied by 2, the continuous power needed at 20 degrees frost. When counting the power for the accumulative power on the 2nd tariff, you need to use 4 (G12r) or 4.8 (G12). In the accumulative weekend tariff (G12w) at -20 degrees the power on weekdays will be 4.8 times higher than the continuous one at 0 degrees, and on Saturdays, Sundays and holidays 2x because then it is cheap around the clock. Knowing what power and energy your house will consume, you can count the rest. If the house is heated by gas and pump at the same time, it is enough to first calculate how much energy (e.g. per day) came from it, and then calculate the COP based on electricity consumption. The problem will be the gas used for DHW and cooking and electricity for household appliances / RTV, but this can also be avoided. For example, turn off gas appliances and go somewhere for several hours of COP measurement.

* Multiplying by 170 we will obtain an approximate result for the region / season with 3400 heating degree days (e.g. in Białystok). It is much warmer in Wrocław, so you should use e.g. 150 (result for 3000 degrees days) or measure the consumption at the house-environment temperature difference of 15 degrees and multiply by 170 (result for 2550 degrees days). Accurate calculation of energy consumed requires taking into account large differences in the season / region (Fig. 7):

http: //www.info heating.pl/print,id_m-100385

gaz4 wrote:

Jesion40 - if I bought a house with a floor covering, I would also be interested in an air-water pump. It is a kind of a natural compound, because the low-temperature underfloor heating system boosts the COP of the pump. Then I would give up the collectors because they are competition for pumps: when the collectors are the most efficient, the pump also achieves the highest COP. For this reason, one of these devices will not be used in an optimal way

Well, it won't be that bad :D

In summer, the pump will work the other way around - it will provide cooling, not heating. The collectors will handle DHW and I am going to drown the excess heat ... in the pool :D

Added after 4 [minutes]:

gaz4 wrote:

The easiest way to estimate the return on your investment would be to determine your home's energy use.

And this is just not as easy as you described. There are too many variables. Outside air temperature, insolation, wind strength are changing ... Moreover, it is difficult to register small changes in temperature inside, and there are also differences between rooms ... I would not undertake this task.

I verified the COP of my pump (roughly) by heating the water in the tank with the collectors idle and the floor heating disconnected. It was enough to refrain from using hot water and I was (almost) adiabatic

Determining the power demand with great accuracy is simple, provided that the measurement is carried out under certain conditions. Right now they are at their best, because on a cloudy day the outside temperature is very stable. With the day-night difference at the level of 2-3 degrees, the measurement error is small. Temperature differences between rooms are of no importance as long as they are just as warm as in normal use. Then the measured power demand will correspond very well to reality, IMHO with a deviation of not more than a few percent. Worse with the estimation of the annual energy demand, there are too large differences between individual years and regions of the country. For me, in severe winter, it is about 70 kWh / m2 per year. The graphics linked above show that if I lived in Wrocław, I would need almost 2x less warmth in winter. And 35 kWh / m2 is almost a passive house - a small country with one climate zone, but the differences in heating costs are huge.